Design of a morning glory spillway

We analysed different configurations for a morning glory spillway, which in fact is one of the largest ones of this type in the world, for the Calanda dam on the Guadalope river. The name of this type of spillway comes from the fact that it generates a flow reminiscent of the corolla of a morning glory flower.

The simulations we performed allowed obtaining configurations that avoided any cavitation problems, while still satisfying the rest of the requirements imposed on the design.

The figure shows the flow trajectories, with the colours indicating the velocity at each point.